Before E3, everyone gets excited for the big new announcements. But after E3, all anyone remembers — and cherishes — are the kind of screw-ups, misfires and awkward heroism you can only get when corporate executives and video game developers have to get on stage and be salesmen in front of millions.

E3 2016 starts next week, and with it comes the opportunity to cheer or groan over teases about upcoming games and news. As we do every year, we're checking back on the hype from last year's show, to see what the big three platform holders actually delivered. Let's start with Microsoft and see how they and their development partners did.

Last Friday, the people who are making No Man's Sky told me they'd been late to a meeting with Steven Spielberg. The legendary director waited, though, because he -- like millions of other people across the world -- was fiending to play No Man's Sky. No pressure, right?

Warren Spector says virtual reality will be a fad, "at best a minor part of gaming's future". Far be it from me to question the director of Deus Ex on, well, anything. But I'm not sure it matters whether VR is a fad. Motion controls were a fad, yet that fad drove the sales of 100 million Wii consoles.

Get a bunch of your friends together. Eat some food. Poop out a new buddy. Then, blow them all up in a giant explosion. Yep, sounds like a Keita Takahashi game.

Last week I flew to Los Angeles for E3, an annual event in which all sorts of video game people gather to complain on Twitter about how busy they are.

There's always a dissonance when one of the most promising new games you see at E3 is also one of the least traditionally "exciting" ones.

When the developers of Mirror's Edge Catalyst introduced their new game at E3, they mostly focused on how players would be free to explore a large open world. Cool, I thought. Good. This is a good thing.

Cast your mind back to the first time you encountered P.T's haunted hallways. It was pretty goddamn scary, right? Now imagine being inside the game while helplessly tied to a chair. That's what it feels like to play The Kitchen; a virtual-reality horror game for Project Morpheus on the PlayStation 4. It was hands down the most disturbing gaming experience of my life. It also convinced me that virtual reality is the future of home entertainment.

Now that the dust has settled, and the hype has drained out of your system, is it possible to talk about E3 2015 with a bit of distance?

Video: Another year, another E3. Time to hand out some virtual awards. If you read Luke's excellent (and hilarious) posts from earlier this week, you already have an idea what we thought of this year's show. But our excellent production team has put together a slick summary of the E3 that was in video form. Enjoy!

On the last day of E3, I checked out the newly announced Hitman game, which is simply called Hitman. I also spoke with IO Interactive creative director Christian Elverdam, and he had some heartening things to say.

I was really excited about this year's E3. At first. It's the end of E3 day one, and I'm looking back on all the news the press conferences brought us.

Adam Boyes, head of third-party developer relations at PlayStation, told me at E3 that he's known about Square's Final Fantasy VII remake for a year. It was a fun secret to keep.

The reveal of big games is sometimes accompanied by the release of some of their concept art, and this E3 has proven to be no different. Inside you'll find concept and promotional images for games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Dishonored 2 and Fallout 4.

Sony decided to close out its E3 press conference this year with Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. After a brief cutscene played, Nathan Drake was supposed to start moving through a crowd... but he just stood still... for a long time. That's when co-director Bruce Straley started panicking.

I played 59 video games, demos and prototypes at this year's E3, a mere 16 of them on the expo's third and final day. Mirror's Edge: Catalyst or Just Cause 3 would have made it an even 60, but EA took close to 90 minutes of my two-hour booth tour to get me through Star Wars Battlefront, leaving no time for Mirror's Edge, and Just Cause 3 cancelled its playable demos at the Square Enix booth on the show floor the night before E3 began.

Moments before stealing the show at Sony's press conference by announcing the Final Fantasy VII remake that may make it in time for the PS5, Square Enix whipped out World of Final Fantasy, a chibi-sprite game that promised to be "adorably familiar" and looked like something made for kids.

Here is Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's entire E3 gameplay demo. It is hotter than your significant other and most celebrities.